To clarify the math, if it takes two man-months (~320 hours) to prepare a SBIR proposal, and you have a 20 percent chance of getting the award, that’s an average of 10 man-months per award. Of course, you could get a Direct to Phase II award, which ups you to $750,000 and make the effort seem more worth it. AFWERX reported 167 Direct to Phase II awards. I presume the percent-win on those is lower than 20%, however.
[Update: Let’s assume Orin’s estimate is true, and let’s value an hour of time at $100. That means the average SBIR award costs $160,000 to win. Likely benefits: $50,000 for a Phase I and $750,000 to $1.5M for Phase II.
Lets take it further. Say there’s $3B of total govt SBIR funds. If 3/4 of awards Phase I of $50K, and 1/4 are Phase II avg. $1M, then the total industry cost of prepping proposals is $1.67B! That’s more than half the value of SBIR awards themselves! Does it pay off down the road?]
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